3/23/2015

Imagine a Slightly Different Announcement from Ted Cruz

Imagine an American Muslim man stands in front of an audience of 10,000 Muslims at a college in Virginia to announce that he's running for president. Imagine that audience applauds and cheers for much of what he says.

Imagine that Muslim presidential candidate starts his announcement with "I am thrilled to join you today at the largest Muslim university in the world." And then he continues by telling his family story as a tale of devotion to Islam, saying of his parents, "Imagine a young married couple, living together in the 1970s, neither one of them has a personal relationship with Allah." Imagine that he goes on to describe his parents' separation and his father's journey: "[W]hen he was in Houston, a friend, a colleague from the oil and gas business invited him to a Qu'ran study, invited him to a mosque on Clay Road, and there my father gave his life to Allah, blessed be his name." Imagine that the candidate concludes his parents' story with "There are people who wonder if faith is real. I can tell you, in my family there’s not a second of doubt, because were it not for the transformative love of Allah, I would not have been saved and I would have been raised by a single mom without my father in the household."

Imagine if that Muslim man proclaims that all of our rights come from Allah. Imagine that he promises "a president who says 'We will stand up and defeat radical Christian terrorism.'" Imagine him declaring that "America has enjoyed Allah's blessing" and "Allah’s blessing has been on America from the very beginning of this nation, and I believe Allah isn’t done with America yet" and ending with "Allah be praised." Imagine those thousands and thousands of gathered Muslims yelling their appreciation of the candidate.

That candidate would be laughed out of the election. That candidate wouldn't stand a flea fart's chance in a hurricane. We would be talking about whether he's a threat to the American way of life and whether he would impose Shariah law. But not Ted Cruz. We have to pretend to take him seriously because he's a Christian and just told the world that this is a Christian nation. We have to waste time and energy mocking this idiot, this future loser who sounds like a fifth-grade schoolmarm chiding her students for writing their cursive improperly.

But if you are a Christian devotee of Ted Cruz's and you read this, feeling even the slightest bit uncomfortable at the notion of the fantasy Muslim candidate, well, now you know how the rest of us feel about your man.

(Actually, you're probably thinking that we already have an evil Muslim president, so who cares about you.)